It's not every day that we see a director of an S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) share sell a quarter of their stake in the company. Yet that's what it looks like is happening with Whitehaven Coal Ltd (ASX: WHC) shares today.
Whitehaven put out an ASX announcement yesterday. This confirmed that director Dr Julie Beeby has offloaded 20,000 Whitehaven shares on 19 December in an on-market transaction. Beeby received a total of $211,800 for this sell. This implies a sell price of $10.59 per share.
The director had 85,000 shares of Whitehaven before this sell, which has now been reduced to 65,000 shares. This means that Beeby has just cut her stake in the compnay by 23.53%, leaving her with a parcel of Whitehaven shares worth just over $690,000.
Beeby is a non-executive director at Whitehaven, so this sale is an important one to mark. No reason was given for the sale.
Why is a Whitehaven director selling their shares?
Investors generally don't approve of management selling shares. It's hardly a vote of confidence in their own company, after all, and many view such actions as misaligning the interests of shareholders and management.
However, there are plenty of good reasons why a member of a company's management team might want to sell some shares. Concentration of wealth in a single company is almost universally derided as a bad idea from an investing perspective.
Most investing experts will tell aspiring investors to diversify their wealth and not to 'put too many eggs in one basket'. After Whitehaven's spectacular share price performance over 2022, that's exactly what a director like Dr Beeby might be pursuing.
The Whitehaven share price is up an extraordinary 285% year to date in 2022, as you can see below:
Beeby might just want to take some of these profits off the table after such a breathtaking share price gain. Coal shares like Whitehaven are notoriously cyclical too, so this would add to the temptation to harvest some of those profits.
It's up to Whitehaven shareholders to assess Beeby's actions and what it means for the company and its investors. But this is certainly not an unusual move for a director, given the circumstances at play.
Today, the Whitehaven share price has fallen substantially on the share market. Although the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) has gained 0.65%, Whitehaven is down by 1.35% at $10.64 a share.
